Old speaker compatibility

[msteeln]

More modern 'stereo' speakers can't be used with guitar amps and vice versa, but can an 40s era 5" Rola radio speaker (4 ohm) handle the heavier duty of guitar amp use, or were these too strictly for radio and not suitable as a small vintage guitar speaker replacement?

[Ch0jin]

As long as you observe power and impedance requirements you can actually use 'stereo' speakers and 'guitar' speakers interchangeably from an electronics point of view.

They will however probably sound horrible when swapped around.

This is a result of frequency response. 'Stereo' speakers are designed for a fairly flat response because the intent is to accurately reproduce the source, whereas 'guitar' speakers are designed to have all kinds of different peaks and toughs in frequency response so they sound "musical" when driven from a guitar amp.

To answer your specific question, I would absolutely try out an old 5" Rola in a low power guitar amp!

Do you have any idea what kind of power rating the speakers have?

[deeaa]

What he said :-) and in addition, many people have actually built quite nice guitar amps from old tube radios by simply building a suitably impedanced input jack circuit into them instead of the feed from the actual receiver. And often they can sound really sweet, too, nice bluesy crunchy tube tones at very low volumes.

So yeah, I'd not hook that speaker up to any modern amp, but it might work very well with a real low-power tube stage like that of the old radios or some 2W Zvek or something.

Hm, maybe it would be worth a try on some 9V powered belt amp?

[msteeln]

Thanx!